Ritualization in the Sevillian Holy Week Theory on Its Practice and the Practice of Theory

Date of Award

2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Marks, Susan

Keywords

Holy Week, Ritual, Sevilla, Spain

Area of Concentration

Religion

Abstract

The increase in Andalusia's regional tourist industry, combined with Spain�s transition from dictatorship to a democratic state as well as recent struggles between the local elements of popular Catholicism and the Second Vatican Council�s reforms, have together created demands within the Catholic lay brotherhoods in Seville to gain recognition for their role in the city's religious life by trying to incorporate into the "official" list of permitted penitential processions during Seville�s Holy Week. I focus on the recent addition of a brotherhood to the Holy Week, which initiated its first official procession in 2007, in order to illustrate how the influential forces have opened interpretation of the ritual to points of view outside of the brotherhoods that practice the processions. I have applied my research to historical accounts of Catholicism's role in Spain; anthropological interpretations of popular vs. clerical religion in Andalusia; local newspaper articles detailing the developments in additions to the Sevillian Holy Week; and what I could draw from my own observations in Seville during the 2007 and 2008 Holy Week celebrations. Because this project aimed at applying ritual theory to practice, I enlist the special considerations that Clifford Geertz, Catherine Bell and Ronald Grimes have presented in their theories on ritual and base my interpretation of the ritual change on all three scholars� methods of analysis.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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